𝐒𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐖𝐇𝐈𝐓𝐄 || Narnia x The Hunger Games Crossover

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Rain pounded in Lucy's ears and she stumbled against the raging current at her thighs, the silver shroud of rain having long since blotted out Edmund's figure sprawled at the edge of the dark hill, though still the image lingered in her mind as she blinked through the downpour and rubbed her eyes with freezing wet fingers.

She had to focus on Caspian.

He might still be out here.

He might still be alive.

Please, she begged, please, let me find him, please let me find him.

Don't be dead.

Don't be dead.

Don't you dare be dead, Caspian Telmar.

"Caspian!" she shouted as she slogged in through the eaves of the forest, roots and underbrush breaking the current even as the roar drowned out her voice.

No one would hear that.

"Caspian!" she cried again anyway.

Branches lashed her face and she stumbled through clumps of bracken as the ground rose ever so slowly upward and the water lapped only at her knees.

Her boot caught on a root and she lurched forward, hands slamming into the mud beneath frothing water, leather wedged tight and pinching her toes as she struggled to no avail for several moments before reaching down to unlace it with numb fingers.

At last, her foot slipped free and she stumbled forward, now completely barefoot as she limped a few paces and broke back into a run over slippery, uneven terrain littered with roots and brambles, until a noise pricked at the edge of her senses and she pulled up short.

She spun, staring wildly around into the downpour made even more deafening by the canopy overhead.

Had she imagined it?

She struck out to keep moving, but a second later it came again, even over the din of the storm.

The clash of metal.

Lucy drew her dagger just as a figure crashed through the trees up ahead and leapt over a fallen log, stumbling and nearly falling before picking himself up and ducking around a tree only a few yards away.

"Caspian!" she cried just before a knife flew after him and stuck in the tree.

Caspian skidded and his dark eyes snapped up to her through tangles of soaking hair, the briefest warning flashing across his face before Rhince landed with a heavy splash on their side of the log and charged after him.

The career boy glanced at Lucy and swerved in her direction before she could even take a step back, sword flashing naked in his hand as her heart skipped a beat.

She stumbled and tripped on a root, slamming hard to one knee when she tried to turn, broad shoulders and muscular arms flickering in the corner of her vision as she scrambled to right herself, glancing over her shoulder just as metal flashed overhead.

Caspian crashed full force into the boy's sturdy silhouette and bowled them both into the water with a sharp cry and a violent spray.

Lucy jumped and scrambled back, reorienting herself as silver flashed and one body surged up to strike the other, all a surging mess of straining muscles under soaked fabric and swirling dark current.

The clash of metal rang sharp over the din as one sword flipped and splashed into the water, and then a boot struck out and knocked the second blade from its wielder's grip just before Lucy picked Caspian out of the two, his hair flashing as he spun to grasp for his sword, and Rhince's hands closed around his throat.